culture - Emergent Divergence

Apr 4 2023

Neuroqueer: Neuro-anarchy and the Chaotic Self

This article was co-authored by David Gray-Hammond and Katie Munday

Throughout this blog series, we have been discussing Neuroqueer Theory and the ways that it can be applied to people’s lives. We have considered gender identity, depathologising psychiatric conditions, and how one might embody their psychological wellbeing, to name but a few. In wider work, David has discussed neurofuturism and moving away from normative thinking. In this article, we would like to introduce the concepts of neuro-anarchy and the Chaotic Self to the discussion of Neuroqueer Theory, and consider how the two synergise with each other.

What is Neuro-anarchy?

Neuro-anarchy is the removal of oneself, either consciously or unconsciously, from the neuronormative standards that exist within one’s own neuroculture. Using the Autistic community as an example, our culture has its own set of rules and normative values, as does any cultural group; neuro-anarchy is a radical decentering of normativity. If we consider that our sense of Self is built upon the values and opinions or our prevailing culture, neuro-anarchy invites us to step outside of those values and carve our own space within which to form an identity. Munday (2022) discusses neuro-anarchy in the context of Autistic shielding.

What is the Chaotic Self?

In A Treatise on Chaos Gray-Hammond (2023) discusses the idea of our sense of Self being a fluid and moving entity, constantly changing and reshaping as we receive new information and interact with the environment. He discusses how to queer one’s neurology, we must first consider that changes we make are unable to be reversed. In this sense, the Self tends towards being a chaotic system that is in a constant state of change. You can’t unqueer a queer mind.

What is the relevance of these to each other?

Neuro-anarchy is an act of protest, it is how one neuroqueers in spaces that should belong to us but instead remain external in our relationship to who we are. Neuro-anarchy arises from a level of cognitive dissonance that presents when a person finds themselves an outsider in a group that they should fit into.

In response to this cognitive dissonance, we create our own individual values and concept of the Self that allow us to reconcile the dysphoria of rejection, and bring peace to a bodymind that recognises the fractures and contradictions in it’s own cultures and communities.

Neuro-anarchy invites us to step back from the minutia of community advocacy and consider how one’s community and culture fits into the world’s wider picture. This is where the Chaotic Self comes in. The concept of the Chaotic Self tells us that wider power dynamics and systems within our world inform the discourse around our identities, which in turn become a part of the Self.

A neuro-anarchistic approach to one’s identity teaches us to decentralise all systems of power and instead look to how the individual can build a community from the shared subjective experiences that constitute our culture.

As the individual Self grows and changes, so too must our community.

By stepping away from the power structures that exist in our society, we are able to pick and chose the concepts that form the Self. This in turn allows us to effectively neuroqueer through the subversion of all expectation, and not just those that our community desires us to subvert. Neuro-anarchy allows us to move fluidly throughout cultural identities, and internalise the concepts from within them that we feel are most relevant to us.

By understanding the nature of neuro-anarchy and the Chaotic Self, we are able to see ourselves not as a collection of identities but instead a single Self that belongs (to some extent) to multiple cultural groups. We are able to subvert identity politics while holding an awareness of where we do or do not have privilege.

If neuroqueering is a liberatory act, then neuro-anarchy is the tool we use for that act. The Chaotic Self, then, is the overarching way of understanding one’s sense of Self throughout the process of neuroqueering. It allows us to embrace the fact that once queered, the bodymind cannot return to it’s previous state. By embracing this we transcend normative values and enter a world of infinite possibility (Gray-Hammond, 2022).

References

Gray-Hammond, D (2022) The infinite and I: Embracing my Neuroqueer Self. Emergent Divergence. https://emergentdivergence.com

Gray-Hammond, D (2023) A Treatise on Chaos: Embracing the Chaotic Self and the art of neuroqueering. Independently Published.

Munday, K. (2022) Counterculture: Autistic shielding and neuro-anarchy. Autistic and Living the Dream. https://autisticltd.co.uk

David Gray-Hammond 6 Comments

Feb 14 2023

The infantilisation of Autistic people and the future of our blossoming culture

I would be lying if I said I was not somewhat inspired by the fact that it is Valentine’s day today. It’s a day that gets mixed responses from the Autistic community. Relationships are often a touchy subject for us. We live in a world that fights hard to keep us at the fringes. This, of course, led me to a talking point that has been considered time and again. Autistic people are not perpetual children. We do become Autistic adults, and we engage in adult relationships. You might think that this is all that needs to be said, but actually, there is a deeper conversation to be had about the infantilisation of our community and how this impacts our growing culture.

Wider society views us as “less than”. This is not a debatable point. It’s a fact. When you consider the history of autism and neurodiversity as a whole; we have been relegated to a lower rung of the social ladder than those who can successfully perform neurotypicality. We are treated as though we are child-like, and at times as though we aren’t even human. I have genuinely heard people say that having sex with an Autistic adult should be criminalised. It is assumed that we lack the capacity to make those sorts of choices for ourselves.

Let me pause their for a minute. Yes, it is true that there are Autistic people who lack the capacity to make decisions around romantic and sexual partners. There are Autistic people who are very vulnerable, whom predators wait to take advantage of. I do not want to take away from this. What I want to highlight is that Autistic people, in general, are more than capable of deciding they want to engage in an adult relationship or sex.

So now, we are left with this uncomfortable fact; we are seen as perpetual children. What purpose does it actually serve for those in power and privilege to allow the perpetuation of an idea that is so incredibly incorrect and harmful?

Autistic people are finding new ways to connect and organise. This has resulted in us having our own dialect, forms of socialisation, social rules, and collective hopes and dreams for the future. The growth of the online neurodiversity movement has empowered Autistic people beyond the point of activism. At this point, we are an emerging counter-culture. This is an important distinction to make.

By centring our existence as an identity and culture, we are disempowering medical and diagnostic models of neurodiversity. Normative systems have relied on the framing of autism as a condition of asociality and a lack of meaningful personhood. If we are emerging as a culture, clearly, we are more than a tick box exercise that can be used to fuel a captialist medical industrial complex. The claim that we lack sociality and personhood is fundamentally dismantled when we show the world that we are capable of not just building a culture but building one that diametrically opposes existing oppressive structures.

The quickest way to conquer your cognitive dissonance in this scenario is to assume we are incompetent. This incompetence comes on the form of infantilisation, which itself is rooted in childism and the assumption that all child-like people lack full personhood.

This is why, for the sake of our communities future, we need to crush infantilisation. We need to demonstrate not just our personhood but the reality of Autistic adulthood. We need to build the taboo nature of adult pursuits into our culture. This has been all-the-more important to me in my work with Autistic drug users. So many times have I seen Autistic people denied support because “Autistic people don’t use drugs”. Infantilisation is more insidious than invalidation of out culture, it is life-threatening.

If we want to move into a future where being Autistic can be more than an identity in a hidden counter-culture, we need to start by disproving the idea that we lack competence. We need to take a stand and demonstrate that we will not tolerate being treated as children.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Feb 11 2023

Neurodivergence and Normality: The meaning of words

“I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so.”
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

The neurodiversity movement is predicated on three deceptively simple ideas:

There are as many variations of the human mind as there are humans.
Those who can not perform to neurotypical standards are neurodivergent.
Neurodivergent people deserve equity and inclusion in our shared environment.

Upon this premise, an entire collective culture of shared knowledge and community-connectedness has blossomed. Creating spaces where neurodivergent people have, for the first time, felt they belong. For many of us, including myself, it has been not just life-changing. It has saved us from an early demise.

But what is neurotypicality? What is it exactly that we diverge from?

Neurotypicality is a performance. It is a set of normative ideas that we have come to accept as “normal”. While those normative ideas my change based on the local environments culture, the truth remains that the word “normal” has been weilded as a weapon to justify the dehumanisation and oppression of all who can not, or will not, assimilate.

Normality is itself a social construct. It is an abstract entity. It is not measurable or tangible. While one could argue that normality is a word that represents that which most have on common, we could just as easily have given it the opposite meaning.

All words are essentially meaningless. The objective truth of a words meaning is something of a social contract between ourselves and those around us. For the context of this essay, let us take normality or “normal” to mean the most commonly found attributes of a given population.

In this sense, Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people are abnormal. We have diverged from normality, representing what is framed by wider society as an aberration in the status quo. On the basis of this, a global industrial complex has risen up in order to not only force our assimilation into normality but also turn that endeavour into a profitable business.

How does one move forward when the world is at odds with your existence?

Even in neurodivergent communities, we frame ourselves through our differences. Celebrating the idea that we are different to that which normativity requires. While their is beauty to be found in such an existence, I believe that we must transcend the limitations of normality. Not through our difference, but instead by our assertion that “normal” does not exist.

We are not different because of our lack of normality. We are different because we embrace individuality and diversity. The difference between normality and normativity is semantic in nature. Normality is the attractive package that is gifted to us to take into our home. We must challenge normativty at its core and not at its surface.

To move into a post-normal society, one must first be able to conceive of such a place. We must establish new boundaries that turn the sound of normality into background noise. Drowning out normative beliefs with the voices of those that refuse to assimilate.

This, of course, presents a problem for not just neurotypical society but also neurodivergent communities. Even in our own culture, there exists a kind of essentialism in the idea that you are either neurotypical or neurodivergent. In a post-normal world, words like “divergent” and “typical” become redundant. If we have no preconceived notions of normality, then there is no need for a counter-culture. There is nothing to assimilate into.

Such a world would allow for the emancipation of neurodivergent communities but fundamentally alter the meaning of what it means to be neurodivergent. We would not be connecting over our differences but rather our shared culture. Such culture is difficult to quantify at this stage because we still have a long way to travel.

For now, this kind of neurofuturism may sound naively utopian, perhaps even dystopian, depending on your outlook. If I can be sure of one thing, it’s that it’s time for us to conceive of a world beyond normality. It is the first step on a journey toward a world where the oppression of neurodivergent people is no longer possible.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Jan 8 2023

Cure culture and normative attitudes towards Autistic people

Nothing sickens me more than people who believe that being Autistic requires intervention. The idea that we have to “improve” an Autistic person’s “skills” is in inherently ableist. Where does this ableism come from?

The truth of the matter is that as we edge closer and closer to a post-normal society, those who have succumbed to normativity fight hard to preserve the world that they believe is “right”. We have been taught that deviation from cultural norms is a disorder, but this is an abject lie.

Society has been built upon a foundation of bigotry and oppression of minorities. When we subscribe to the idea that Autistic people are suffering or in need of intervention, we further that belief. We have centred our own normative ideas into disabled people and made our internalised bigotry their problem.

When we can recognise that the problem is not the Autistic person, we are then able to externalise the issue into the environment. If you want to know why Autistic people are suffering, look no further than their experiences of the wider world and their immediate environment.

The responsibility is not on Autistic people to assimilate into society. The responsibility lies with society to make space for the inclusion of Autistic people.

Every time you empower the curists, you set a blockade on our path to progress. If you are reading this thinking “but you’re not like my child” I would respond with this-

No, I am not, I am an adult. I would ask you to consider why you believe your child is abnormal, where you learned your standards of normalcy from, and why you believe normality to be so important. We have a right to grow and change into whoever we wish to be. No one should be trying to control our expression of the Self, or the way we think and relate to the world.

I ask only one thing of my readers. Please step away from the concept of normal. Recognise that all normality measures is how comfortably we can serve a society that doesn’t give a damn about us.

If we can’t operate at the right level of productivity, without causing a nuisance to other people, we are written off. This is the world that curists want us to fit into, a world that would sooner destroy us than make space for us to exist as whole people.

We have a write to our Self.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Dec 13 2022

Neuroqueer: Dismantling our internalised ableism

This article was co-authored by David Gray-Hammond and Katie Munday

Trigger Warning: This article contains references to systemic and structural oppression, multiple marginalisation, and negative wellbeing and identity.

Ableism is prevalent in the wider world, but something that we often don’t consider is the ableist views we hold about ourselves. It is inevitable that after spending our lives surrounded by normative culture, we become conditioned to view ourselves as broken, deficient, or less than. Despite being able to share compassion with others, we still harbour overtly bigoted views towards ourselves.

We internalise the harmful things said to us by our peers and professionals – sometimes even partners and friends. We take them all in and think less of ourselves and we begin to believe that there is something wrong with us.

It is clear that our interactions with other people play a significant role in the development of our sense of Self. Our identity is constructed by interactions with people in our environment, as noted in the golden equation from Luke Beardon:

Autism + Environment = Outcome

When Autistic people are in an environment that constantly belittles and mistreats us for our Autistic embodiment, the materials that we can access to construct ourselves are often self-deprecating.

How does one dismantle a lifetime of criticism and negative views arising from those experiences? First we have to understand the impact that said criticism has had on our psychological wellbeing. We have to recognise the neutrality of human thought, we have to learn that not all thoughts we have are reflective of who we are. It is possible to have negative thoughts without judging them as an indictment on our character. Once we begin to do this we are able to replace the criticisms with authenticity; a refusal to be ashamed of our embodiment. Perhaps, then, this is where neuroqueering comes into play.

It’s important to note the privilege at play when people are safe to queer their neurology. Authentic embodiment of Autistic experience can cost people their lives and their freedom in the wrong environment. Whether we care to admit it or not, not all Autistics are born equal in this society. Many Autistic people are multiply marginalised, and experience more than “just” disability discrimination.

One might ask whether or not neuroqueering is a physical act, or something that can be achieved in the mind. Many of us are at peace with ourselves whilst not openly confessing our Autistic experience. This reflects more on the environments that we inhabit than how we feel about ourselves. We can be proudly Autistic whilst understanding that not all environments are safe to authentically embody those experiences.

We also have to consider the role that the pathology paradigm plays in the existence of neuroqueering. The pathologisation and medicalisation of Autistic experience is the driving force behind most (if not all) of the ableism that we experience day-to-day. The idea that people who do not fit cultural standards of “normal” are broken, has not only created the mistreatment we experience; it also necessitated the existence of a counter-culture- neuroqueering.

How does neuroqueering change our perception of ourselves?

Neuroqueering can involve leaning into our weirdness, regardless of other’s opinions. It can also be radical self-acceptance and showing love to the parts of our Self that others have mistreated and abused. Not only does this allow us to reclaim the narrative surrounding our existence, it also gives us permission to take up the space that we have been conditioned to believe we are not entitled to.

Neuroqueer theory teaches us that assimilation denies us access to ourselves, and thus, denies access to the communities (or environments) that will help us meet our need for connection. Only by being our authentic selves can we find similar others and share in reciprocal validation. Neuroqueering dismantles internalised ableism, and the oppressive structures that have been built in our minds by others. It is a practice which champions diversity whilst appreciating that many of us still need support.

Neuroqueering politicises the nature of disability, centering us as the individuals in control of our own lives. Control that many of us are denied for being authentically Autistic. It allows us to appreciate the aforementioned neutrality of our existence through the lens of pride, and the refusal to be ashamed. It recognises that reduced wellbeing is the result of systemic oppression, and a chronic lack of access.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Jul 20 2022

Addiction doesn’t strip us of our humanity

Trigger Warning: This article contains discussion of addiction, death, metaphors around death, dehumanisation, and mistreatment.

What defines us as a human?

Is it rhetorical ability? Emotional experiences? Perhaps the tools we use?

I would argue that one of the defining characteristics of our humanity is our ability to to recognise humanity in others, or perhaps more specifically, our ability to deny the humanity of others. Thanks to years of colonialism, warfare, and eurocentric beliefs, we have developed a strange sort of morality. This morality is what we use to ordain or deny a person or object as human/human-adjacent.

Unfortunately, when you are an addict, human-adjacent would be a big step up in how the world sees you. For as long as we have existed, we have been ignored, spoken over, driven out of our homes, and killed. This because contemporary spins on normative morality posit that to be an addict, is to be a monster. We are beyond help and reason.

We are what you fear your children will become.

The truth is that all judgements on addiction come from a place of moral relativism. Addiction is only seen as a moral failing because of cultural attitudes towards the behaviour associated with addiction. Fundamentally, it is seen as a moral failing, rather than a response to trauma and unmet support needs. If we could move society to a more “trauma-informed” culture, it is likely that attitudes towards addiction would alter quite significantly.

This isn’t to say that addiction doesn’t represent a risk to others. As addicts, we find ourselves doing things we never imagined or wanted ourselves doing. The lengths that one might go to in that desperation can lead to some truly awful consequences. To put it another way; we still have to take ownership of our shitty behaviour, whatever the reason. However, we also require some level of compassion. Compassion can go a long way one the journey to recovery.

Sadly, compassion doesn’t go all the way. We still need professional input from those who know how to deconstruct the circumstances of addiction, and help the person to rebuild their life. We need to build a life where it is easier not to engage with our addiction. This is made ever more difficult by the defunding of services that work to do such things. Besides that, we need to recognise that heroin, crack, and alcohol, are not the only substances that need attention from services. The world of addiction grows more complicated by the day, especially since the dawn of novel psychoactives.

Considering the future, we need to build a world where it is not necessary to become addicted to survive. A world where if we do become addicted, we are not shunned to the outer edges of our community. We need people to stop acting like addicts choose to be addicts. Addiction knows no boundaries, it can come for anyone.

Deconstructing societal and cultural attitudes will take a long time. Things like decriminalisation are important, but if done badly could actually reinforce moral judgements of substance users. For this reason, we need further longitudinal data looking at other countries that have done such things, seeing where the positives and the pitfalls lie.

It’s vital that we do this work, because moral judgement and “not in my neighbourhood” attitudes are literally killing addicts. The world has blood on its hands, and it doesn’t even realise it.

Addicts deserve their humanity.

David Gray-Hammond 2 Comments

Jul 6 2022

Autism “cure” culture and normative violence

TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains detailed discussion of harmful “cures”. It also mentions ABA, MMS, Chelation, and has in depth discussion around normative society and the murder of Autistic people.

For as long as I have been an advocate, many of my fellow Autistics have spoken out against cure culture. From Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) to Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), there are myriad “treatments” that claim to purge the autism from autistic people. I could speak at length about the direct harm that these quack interventions inflict, but there is a deeper level of conversation to be had.

We are engaged, at present, in a culture war. On the one hand, we have Autistic culture which teaches us to be neurologically queer in every sense of the words. Be ourselves, connect with the self and express it in a way that honors our neurocognitice style. On the other hand, is cure culture.

Cure culture teaches us that who we are is broken, deficient, unrelentingly burdensome. Curists would have you believe that our lives are empty, broken, that we are trapped in a living death. Alive but somehow non-existent. The discourse around autism “cures” is dominated by non-autistic people who believe they are performing acts of mercy by pouring bleach solutions down our throats, and chelation drugs into our veins.

All of these things are a form of violence against a minority group that simply wants to live in peace. A minority group that intersects with many other oppressed demographics.

This is why Autistics get angry, this is why our lives revolve around our Autistic identity. Not only do we have to be Autistic in a world that desires normativity, we have to justify why we shouldn’t be tortured and murdered by people that are often (incorrectly) described as “well-meaning”. We constantly have to justify our existence. We are begging to be allowed to live while the world at large seeks to destroy us.

And yes, my Autistic self is defined by that which they seek to remove. Remove the autism, and you remove the person. Autism doesn’t even exist, only the Autistic-self exists. I am Autistic, not a person with a fucking carry-on bag where I store my quirks.

Do you want to know why pretty much every Autistic person you meet is at some level of burnout? It’s because we are dealing with this bullshit every second, of every minute. Every hour, of every day. By their nature, our lives require us to educate people on why we should be allowed to carry on existing. Have you tried to every account while teaching literally everyone you meet why being Autistic is not something to be grieved and/or corrected? It’s exhausting.

This is the culture war that we are fighting. We have no choice but to join the frontlines. We have to raise our voices above those who would speak over us.

After all, isn’t the whole point to leave a better world for our progeny?

David Gray-Hammond 5 Comments

Jul 3 2022

ABA: Essentialism in practice

For as long as I have been part of the online Autistic community, we have spoken out against and educated on the topic of the harms of Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA). While I could discuss the real world trauma and attitudes that proceed and preceed ABA respectively, today I’d like to take a more philosophical approach (I know, surprising right?).

It seems to me as though the existence and practice of ABA comes down to essentialism, or in more accessible terms; it comes down to the belief that people belong to specific categories with specific traits. This essentialism than has a provincialist spin put on it where by those with a predominant neurocognitive style widely apply their experiences as the “correct” experiences.

This allows for a discourse in which the Autistic person is then subject to “behavioural intervention” for “their own good”. However, the problem with behaviourism on the whole is that (and stick with me on this) Autistic behaviour is not mindless.

Behaviourists focus almost exclusively on outward expression of the self, with little to know regard for how the self experiences its world internally.

The problem with being you, is that you can only be you, you cannot experience another’s inner world, you cannot even prove another person is a sentient being. This is the entire basis of a school of thought known as solipsism. So given this solipsistic conundrum, how might one determine the inner experience of the other self, and how that defines their behaviour?

You allow them to tell you.

The problem is that the neurologically queer are seen as lacking in capacity to speak on their experiences. Remi Yergeau calls this “demi-rhetoricity” in their book Authoring Autism“. This demi-rhetoricity exists because Autistics are considered paradoxically to be either too Autistic to be able to speak on their experiences, or not Autistic enough.

So now we live in world where Autistics are subjected to behavioural interventions wherein they are invalidated and traumatised despite their outcries to stop.

A popular claim of ABA is to discuss it’s so-called evidence base. The problem with this evidence base is that pesky essentialism/provincialism problem I mentioned earlier. I’m sure a lot of Autistic people have been converted by this intervention (after all, it was literally pioneered by good ol’ Lovaas, the father of conversion therapy), but what is actually being achieved?

Yes, the Autistic person may behave in a more neurotypical manner, but fundentally they are still Autistic. The only salient difference is that now they have been tortured into hiding that which defines their experience. To quote/paraphrase Nick Walker “you can’t unqueer a queer mind, you can only make it multiply queer”.

The real world application of this snippet of neuroqueer theory is this; you can’t turn an Autistic person into a non-Autistic person, you can only force them to behave like a neurotypical, leaving you with a traumatised Autistic.

What happens when people are traumatised from a young age? Addiction, psychosis, depression, anxiety, suicidality (by the way, Autistics are much more likely to die by suicide than the general population, I wonder why that is?). The never ending list of trauma-induced outcomes is pretty endless.

We have a fundamental problem in that trying to stop ABA from being inflicted upon us is like trying to stop a cult that has become mainstream religion. Those out there proselytising will not give a second thought to inflicting violence and aggression on the dissenters. After all, how dare the neuroqueer masses voice opinions that contradict the beliefs of the neurologically typical?

As a final thought, you may currently be experiencing a great deal of pressure to enter your child into an ABA program. I promise you they will be much happier if you forego the 40 hours a week of intensive torture, and instead listen to those of us who share in the strengths and struggles of your child. We may seem different now thar we are adults, but you would be surprised how much we had in common with your child prior to adulthood.

You’d be surprised how much we still have in common now.

David Gray-Hammond 2 Comments

Jun 28 2022

More on Zeno’s Paradoxes and the issues with Autistic to non-Autistic communication

As you may have noticed from my most recent blog post, I am somewhat down a rabbit hole at the moment. In my previous article I discussed Zeno’s paradox of plurality and how it applies to the dehumanisation of Autistic people and the double empathy problem.

Today I would like to consider another of Zeno’s paradoxes and how it applies to the double empathy problem.

This particular paradox was known as the Dichotomy Paradox. Essentially, it explains that when travelling from point A to point B, one must first travel to the halfway point between the two. To then travel from that point to the destination, you must travel half way again. This continues infinitely when travelling towards a fixed destination and thus Zeno argued that you can never reach point B.

When considering communication across different neurocognitive styles, one must also consider what the goal is. If we presume that the goal is “successful communication” then the double empathy problem tells us that this is very difficult due to the different styles of communication. Despite this, Autistic people are always expected to be the ones to put the emotional labour into communicating. This has been discussed by Rachel Cullen, a recording of a livestream with Aucademy featuring them can be found here and here).

We then encounter the dichotomy paradox. Neurotypicals remain a fixed point in the goal of successful communication, while we as Autistics are constantly expected to move towards the goal by accommodating their preferred communication styles. It is as if we are constantly reaching the halfway point, and never reaching our destination. No matter how well we accommodate neurotypical preferences, we are caught in an infinite regression of distance, not achieving the aim.

This to me, highlights the deeper issue of dehumanisation and objectification of Autistics. Neurotypicals (perhaps subconsciously, sometimes consciously) consider themselves the pinnacle of humanity, a goal that all should be striving for. We know from the existence of the various compliance based behavioural interventions, that Neurotypicals do believe this in many cases. Evidenced by the fact that it is considered “gold-standard” to teach Autistic people to hide their Autistic nature.

As Dr. Monique Botha mentioned in their recent seminar, there is a reason why researchers and professionals insist on person-first language. “I want to eradicate autism” sounds much less like genocide than “I want to eradicate Autistic people”. However, both of those statements mean the same thing. This is justified because whether or not they overtly see it, neurologically queer behaviour and experience is seen as non-human. Remi Yergeau argued this dehumanisation was due (at least in part) to a perceived lack of rhetoricity in their book Authoring Autism.

Autistic people are viewed as husks, mindlessly performing nothing, controlled by an abstract spectre called autism. This then is perhaps why so many neurotypical people insist on person-first language, and ignore our preference of identity -first language. Why would they take a step towards the all consuming spectre? Surely it is better to leave such a thing trapped in that infinite journey towards a goal that is never to be reached.

This, then, is the appeal of neuroqueering to me. When I embrace my neuroqueer self, I no longer have to be trapped in the infinite journey towards performative neurotypicality. I escape the dichotomy paradox by abandoning societal expectations, and being true to myself. True to what nature intended for me. I am Autistic, I am divergent, and that divergence is a thing of beauty.

We need to raise up our fellow Autistics, high above the dichotomy of neurotypicality and neurodivergence. We need to embrace a world in which these words are redundant in meaning because no one group has the power to oppress another; and when our fellow Autistics are lost in the dark, we need to shine our own light, and guide them back to the daylight.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

Feb 6 2022

Neuroculture and the dangers of homogeneity

Today I decided to learn about monocultures. A monoculture is an environment in which a single crop is cultivated. The problem with monocultures is that a small change can destabilise the entire thing.

This got me thinking about something I call neurocultures. A neuroculture can be considered the culture created by a collection of neurocognitive identities in a shared environment. Current neurocultures tend to lean towards neuronormative standards, and this is what I want to discuss.

Neurodiversity is not just a biological fact, it is a necessity. From an evolutionary perspective, the presence of multiple neurocognitive styles in a given culture increases the likelihood of problem solving and the survival of the species. Unfortunately, over the years, we find ourselves in a neurotypical dominated culture, with other neurocognitive identities being actively oppressed.

Imagine a plane. You can take a screw out, and it will still fly, you can probably take several screws out. However, eventually you will have taken too many screws out, and the plane will crash. This is what is happening to society.

The current neuroculture is becoming homogenous, with attempts at eugenics being normalised thanks to the presence of systemic ableism. Screws are being removed from the plane, and we are heading for catastrophe.

This is why rights movements like the neurodiversity movement are vital. We need to perpetuate the neurodiversity paradigm. We need to stop the medicalisation and pathology model of neurodiversity. Such models justify the extinguishing of neurocognitive styles that do not conform to the homogeneity of the current society that we live in.

Much like a monoculture, we can’t predict the small changes that can cause disaster in a homogenous neuroculture. We need diversity to survive. It doesn’t matter whether you are autistic or neurotypical, if your culture only includes your neurocognitive style, you are at risk of collapse.

This is why it is vital for all neurominorities to share their culture with each other. We must create a neuroculture as diverse as nature intended. Humans evolved to be symbiotic with each other.

David Gray-Hammond 2 Comments

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